[webkit-dev] Adding <main> element to WebCore

[Michael[tm] Smith]

Maciej Stachowiak <mjs at apple.com>, 2012-11-29 22:18 -0800:

> I mean that by the whatwg process, if Hixie says no clearly and
> definitively, that is the decision.

Yeah, agreed.

But we have lots of other cases where Hixie has either outright said No or
has just simply not specced out something. And in those cases somebody else
had specced something out and sometimes even implemented it experimentally
and then we've seen it get incorporated back into the HTML spec later or
become a deliverable of a W3C working group.

And as Hixie will tell you himself, there are plenty of things that have
eventually made their way into the HTML spec despite Hixie personally
thinking they were bad ideas.

> I say this not to judge, just to describe what it is. This does not of
> course mean that everyone who participates in the WHATWG agrees.
> 
> The only thing I see as likely to change things in the whatwg is
> implementations appearing.

Yeah, and Hixie has said as much himself:

  http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-archive/2012Nov/0041.html

"as far as <main> goes, despite it being a bad idea, there does seem to be
some support for it amongst implementors. So your best move, if you think
it's a good idea, would be to convince them to implement it. That would be
new data which would almost immediately cause the spec to have it added,
regardless of how good an idea it is."

I think that's the spirit in which Steve took time to contribute code for
this, and to start the discussion about it here.

  --Mike

-- 
Michael[tm] Smith http://people.w3.org/mike